Glenn Greenwald has another great piece in Salon attacking the lockstep support for Israel in Congress in the face of massacres. The problem is that the astute Greenwald still has no explanation of why we are experiencing this meltdown in democracy. If the religious/political issue were abortion or gay rights, there would be no confusion on the left: we would blame a social faction, a religious lobby. But in this case we do not finger that lobby, because Jews tend to be so liberal, and the Israel lobby is our sisters and our cousins and our aunts (as Gilbert and Sullivan observed).
The left would always prefer to blame Bush and Cheney and John Hagee.
I dwell on this issue all the time because you can't fight something without knowing its true identity. Also, because in my own media experience, I constantly ran up against precisely this factor: pro-Israel feelings among powerful editors and publishers, coupled with fear of retaliation by readers, advertisers, the well-connected.
Here on Counterpunch is a fabulous piece (sent to me by Jeff Blankfort) by two writers in Paris, Diane Johnstone and Jean Bricmont, making my point: saying that the left must get past its belief that Israel is blindly supported for imperialist/structural reasons.
Bricmont/Johnstone:
Many people, especially on the left, persist in thinking that Israel is only a pawn in an American capitalist or imperialist strategy to control the Middle East. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Israel is of no use to anybody or anything but its own fantasies of domination. There is no petroleum in Israel, or Lebanon, or Golan, or Gaza. The so-called wars for oil, in 1991 and 2003, were waged by the United States, with no help from Israel, and in 1991 with the explicit demand from the United States that Israel stay out (because Israel’s participation would have undermined Washington’s Arab coalition). For the pro-Western petro-monarchies and the "moderate" Arab regimes, Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands is a nightmare, which radicalizes much of their populations and threatens their rule. It is Israel, by its absurd policies, that provoked the creation of both Hezbollah and Hamas and that is indirectly responsible for much of the recent growth of "radical Islam".
However, the main reason for the silence [of Israel's critics] is surely not guilt precisely because it is so artificial, but rather fear. Fear of "what will they think", fear of slander and even of being taken to court for "anti-Semitism". If you are not convinced, take a journalist, a politician or a publisher to some spot where nobody is listening and there is no hidden camera or microphone, and ask whether he or she says in public all he or she thinks of Israel in private. And if not, why? Fear of hurting the interests of capitalism? Fear of weakening American imperialism? Fear of interrupting oil deliveries? Or, on the contrary, fear of Zionist organizations and their relentless campaigns?
This is big news! I can't believe Diane Johnstone (who, you will remember, attacked the Prague uprising in 1968 being "counter-revolutionary") is still alive!
she is, anon, and she just rocked my world
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YES, Bricmont/Johnstone was a wonderful article, but take note of this -
War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, January 8, 2009
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority……
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to globalresearch.ca
It’s important to remember that many left-wing activists are motivated by a common mindset that runs as a psychological undercurrent through much of their world view, and who the “bad guys” of the world are. In left-wing mythos, it’s generally conservative-white-male-Christians who are Evil, and who are the primary victimizers of humanity. Liberal Jews, feminists, homosexuals, socialists and all manner of left-liberal academics hold this principle dear to their hearts, and will mightily resist any unpleasnt truths that throw that world view into question.
Suggesting that Zionist Jews may well be Evil does just that. Why? Because everybody knows Jews are the ultimate victims of conservative-white-male-Christians — left-wing mythos says so — and if it turns out that a good portion of Jews are Evil, too (are in fact hard-Right quasi-fascists when it comes to their own interests) then it throws the entire left-wing black and white narrative into disarray. If the Jews aren’t the righteous victims that leftists have insisted they were for decades, who else might be counterfeit “victims” as well? Feminists? Homosexuals? People of color? It’s all really too much for the dogmatic leftist to bear, the implications are too massive and earth-shattering, and so it’s far easier for them to bury their heads in the sand and insist that it’s white-male-Christian-imperialists pulling the strings behind Israel’s scenes and that the Jews are still the righteous victims that the left has always insisted they were. (And of course, the fact that Jews give so much money to the Democratic party makes it that much easier for left-liberals to persist in their fantasy/false consciousness).
Of course, there are plenty of liberals that don’t bury their heads in the sand on the Israeli issue, and have been calling the Zionists on their Evil for decades (ie CounterPunch.org). But the shrewd political Democratic Party operatives like David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid and Barney Frank are scared to death of what will happen to the entire left-wing “victim” coalition of it expels “the Jews,” and many European left-liberals no doubt go through similar calculations.
So who must be sacrificed in order that the left-liberal establishment can continue to live in a black and white fantasy land, one big happy (and powerful) “victim” family? Why the Palestinians, of course, and increasingly all the other non Jews in the greater Mideast area. Millions, potentially.
Charming people, those establishment left-liberals. What moral courage they exhibit.
No! Israel IS supported for Imperialist reasons. Imperialism is the policy of the finacial oligarchy,of which the zionists are the leading faction. The only imperative that drives them is making the most profit possible,thru what ever means necessary…and as they use the Jewish community as a social prop for their economic and political power,"defense" of Israel,is a bone they throw to their "people",as a small price for the profit they scamm from Madoff like swindles..
It is incorrect to assume that the Empire is guided by rational direction from people who consider the interests of anyone other than themselves…
And most importantly,this "Empire",can have its base moved to any nation that is suitabe for the purposes of its oligarchy..
Spot on Ed!
Thanks anon: I can't believe Diane Johnstone (who, you will remember, attacked the Prague uprising in 1968 being "counter-revolutionary")
You should add that info in Wiki, if you have a source. I didn't know her.
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Spot on Ed!
Posted by: Zionism Is Racism | January 09, 2009 at 04:05 AM
The problem is, Ed's core concept feels very much like a modern form of Manichaeism On one side the Good, the Christians. (Paradoxically, since historically they were considered heretics.) On the other the Bad: the Jews, all sorts of lefties, gays and feminists neatly pigeonholed. Basically Ed's view is not so dissimilar from the Bushies.
If you don't let yourself be confused by history and the depths of knowledge it surely allows you to write impressive short summaries. The problem is that his train of thought derails with the first few questions you test it with.
Let me give you some:
Who exactly are the good in the fight of Christian nations against each other?
If history doesn't matter, at what point the Christians turned into singularly good forces?
If the Christians are inherently good, were the crusades good too? What exactly is the difference of Bush's crusades then?
What is the inherently Christian Good based on? Only the New Testament? Doesn't that demand of Chris/Ed to love his enemy? Or does Ed solely rely on the Apocalyptic vision?
…
Sorry:
(Paradoxically, since historically they were considered heretics.)
Paradoxically, since the Christians considered Manichaeism as heretic.
Posted by: LeaNder
What a screwy interpretation of what Ed wrote. AS if different historical periods stretching across the whole of Western history could be conflated and made into a schematic that accurately describes the realities of the contemporary world.
@LeaNder: You do realize that Ed is critiquing the mindset that the evil white western male is the bad bogeyaman – a Manichean view in and of itself.
It is truly a worthless interpretation.
Ed also fails to see the basic contradiction between his right wing concepts of American society and his supposedly Christian beliefs.
Jewish liberals support nazi-state. Non jewish liberals – the half-way not brain dead among them -do not.
What does that tell you?
For Ed it means liberalism is the problem. If you understand that you share the planet with 6 billion or so other people, you are part of the problem.
yaaawwwwwwnnnnnnn.
"Many people, especially on the left, persist in thinking that Israel is only a pawn in an American capitalist or imperialist strategy to control the Middle East. "
This is true, though I, for the record, I am not one who believes that.
We probably have Chomsky to thank for a good portion of that. I used to take anything that man said as the ultimate truth.
And it was Blankfort that helped me see through that..
If Ed is critiquing the "mindset that the evil white western male is the bad boogyman" than he's critiquing fairly radical feminist theory and not much else….
Thank you, ZIR. The Manichean, Left-Right view of history may well be the major factor in the current inability/unwillingness/refusal of the left-liberals to recognize the "Evil" of the Jewish Zionists. Because they have historically been in the Left camp, organized Jewry simply CAN'T be the bad guys, no matter what they do, according to the dogmatic Leftists. The American Left had a similar problem with black nationalists for awhile, before they quickly threw them under the bus because they didn't have any money or media power. The Jewish nationalists have tons of money and media power, and so won't be expelled from the coalition any time soon. In fact, in the left-liberal camp, they're largely the ones who DO the expelling.
For the record, I'm a conservative-libertarian with cultural Christian and populist leanings, and I guess in Leander's dogmatic, dualist universe, this puts me in the "opposition" camp.
She says: "Ed's core concept feels very much like a modern form of Manichaeism On one side the Good, the Christians. (Paradoxically, since historically they were considered heretics.) On the other the Bad: the Jews, all sorts of lefties, gays and feminists neatly pigeonholed. Basically Ed's view is not so dissimilar from the Bushies"
I have never argued on behalf of the Bushies, and have in fact opposed them as viciously as anyone. I recognize that they and their kind are running a murderous, financially motivated political/power scam, as are nearly all the other angry, authoritarian-minded interest groups, including those on Leander's list above — especially organized Jewry.
That's why I'm a libertarian. I don't want a bunch of dysfunctional, greedy reprobates (be they Left or Righ) having authoritarian, statist control and the rule of law over human destiny. Just look at how organized Jewry is exercising its control over the Palestinians. Look at how the Bushcons have wielded their power. Look at how the leftists in the Sovie Union wielded theirs.
One doesn’t hand a loaded gun and the rule of law to morally stunted, insane ideologues of any stripe.
Ed's far more interested in defining how he's different from everyone else than in exploring what he might hold in common. In that respect he's something like the Jewist/Zionists.
Ed – you make some good points there. personally, I've come to see the so-called left in the US not as a movement but as a congregation of people who share only a rather nebulous opposition to the "right". In the absence of a central unifying set of ideas of what should be, the left needs an "enemy' to define who and what they are. it was such great fun while there were evil republicans to rally against, especially those of the most reactionary variety, such as Bush et al +neocons. Why, we could all pretend that we are united, that we are in lock-step. But what is the "left" going to do now that they supposedly won? some win, looking at many of obama's appointments, indeed.
In truth, liberals are steeped deep in cognitive disonance and nothing brings it more to the fore that the question of ongoing zionist injustice in their continuing persecution of the palestinians. There is a mile wide schism in the guts of the liberal movement in this country because of this issue, probably because a majority of the jews care, in fact, socially liberal. Yet many of them are the very opposite of liberal when it comes to Israel and/or Arabs in general. Phil coined a good term – PEP – progressive Except for Palestine.
Unfortunately, as you point out this tends to bring out the moral banckrupcy of the liberal movement and is, IMO, the primary and principal reason "Change" is an empty slogan. I don't blame obama for that either. It has to do with one one must do to get elected in the US to any high office. It has to do with the process of learning to obey "The man" (not seen as either white or even male in this context).
These days, I find myself more in agreement with pat Buchanan and Ron paul than keith Oldermann (who is rapidly descending into a trite show about nothing, precisely because of the 800 pound gorilla in the room that dare not speak its name). I feel sorry for rachel maddow. She seems boxed in on a key issue of the day (Gaza) and seems to bristle almost at her confinement.
Poor progresssives. Maybe those of us who do not wish to exclude the truth about I/P conflict, or about georgia, or india, or, about the evil inherent in allowing such powerful lobbies to lord over us in the first place, should reach out and find the commonality we have with libertarians. In truth, were one to look a bit more deeply beyond the white/left, immigrant/citizen, central/decentral government, we may find that true progressives (whatever that means) have more in common with libertarians than with those on the left who are supposedly on our side. On our side except when it really counts, that is.
Thank you dana for your insightful comments. I believe to my core that the future of the West will either be libertarian or totalitarian. If the Left-Right socialist status-quo has its way, they'll force us to accept the Judeofascists and like it. This, of course, is untenable and intolerable, and the only way it can be accomplished (even temporarily) is by setting up a centralized police state, which is why the Judeofascists have historically made common cause with authoritarian absolutists and big government centralizers (see Ginsberg’s ‘Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State.’
No doubt many individual Jews authentically embrace liberal values, but organized Jewry’s talk of "tolerance" and "inclusiveness" has always merely been a means to the Judeofascist-run police state end. Many individual Jews are completely unaware of this.
"Yet many of them are the very opposite of liberal when it comes to Israel and/or Arabs in general. Phil coined a good term – PEP – progressive Except for Palestine."
lol!
I'm really starting to think Ed is CIA.
But I guess that's a good thing if they are having issues with zionism.
What about Vietnam?
A noble mission?